Debian DSA-254-1 : traceroute-nanog - buffer overflow

high Nessus Plugin ID 15091

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

A vulnerability has been discovered in NANOG traceroute, an enhanced version of the Van Jacobson/BSD traceroute program. A buffer overflow occurs in the 'get_origin()' function. Due to insufficient bounds checking performed by the whois parser, it may be possible to corrupt memory on the system stack. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote attacker to gain root privileges on a target host. Though, most probably not in Debian.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project additionally identified the following vulnerabilities which were already fixed in the Debian version in stable (woody) and oldstable (potato) and are mentioned here for completeness (and since other distributions had to release a separate advisory for them) :

- CAN-2002-1364 (BugTraq ID 6166) talks about a buffer overflow in the get_origin function which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via long WHOIS responses.
- CAN-2002-1051 (BugTraq ID 4956) talks about a format string vulnerability that allows local users to execute arbitrary code via the -T (terminator) command line argument.

- CAN-2002-1386 talks about a buffer overflow that may allow local users to execute arbitrary code via a long hostname argument.

- CAN-2002-1387 talks about the spray mode that may allow local users to overwrite arbitrary memory locations.

Fortunately, the Debian package drops privileges quite early after startup, so those problems are not likely to result in an exploit on a Debian machine.

Solution

Upgrade the traceroute-nanog package.

For the current stable distribution (woody) the above problem has been fixed in version 6.1.1-1.2.

For the old stable distribution (potato) the above problem has been fixed in version 6.0-2.2.

See Also

http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-254

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 15091

File Name: debian_DSA-254.nasl

Version: 1.21

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/29/2004

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:traceroute-nanog, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:2.2, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:3.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 2/27/2003

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2002-1051, CVE-2002-1364, CVE-2002-1386, CVE-2002-1387

BID: 4956, 6166, 6274, 6275

DSA: 254